Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6755
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6755
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I had a friend who was a substitute elementary teacher who had a similar problem. Granted, he was working with a fourth-grader, but essentially, he sat down with her and line by line they created the paragraph together. He suggested something, she suggested something, etc.

At the end, she kept insisting, "I don't do A-plus work." He pointed at the paper and said, "You just _did_."

If your student is terrified of being judged — making the perfect the enemy of the good — then maybe sitting down and holding the student's hand and actually showing the student, line by line, "I will not critique this. This can be critiqued. This is fine. This is fine too." will work. Actually force your way past the judgment point so the student sees it's not quite the Harshmageddon expected.

[This](https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1699/writing-first-programming-book/1700#1700) answer might also be useful; if the student gets used to assembling notes and phrases, then fine-tuning might be easier.

ETA something practical which is also rep bait for John Smithers: Another idea might be to get the student to focus on a topic s/he absolutely loves and can talk about for hours: Justin Bieber, Star Trek, dragons. Then ask to student to do an infodump on everything s/he knows about the topic, including Anne McCaffrey, Arthurian legends, George R.R. Martin, and Dreamworks movies. Getting excited about the topic might help the student get past the fear of having every word weighed.

Original score: 5